About Artist and Work Process:
When creating this piece, my objective was to create a light tool with an architectural nature. I wanted to portray my love for vibrant colors in a different medium here, inspired by my interest in the psychedelic art movement of the 1960s. The constructed armature should manipulate a light source and should be photographed by long exposure light photography. I created a hand-held rotating light tool that produced fantastical, highly contrasting circular spirals of light when spun. After sketching, photographing, and scanning both the tools and light spirals, I assembled the shapes into Photoshop and Illustrator. The four drawings show the four sides photographed from 90-degree angles and serve as the orthographic elevations for the project.
I was very inspired by the vibrant color palettes used in the Psychedelic art of the 60s. I found that light photography in itself is a form of painting with a different medium you cannot physically touch. By using basic colors of miniature handheld LED lights (Red, blue, green, and white) I could further create more colors when the lights were spun and overlapped. I discovered that when the blue and red lights overlapped and were photographed, they made soft purple hues, similar to mixing colors when painting. This is where the title of the piece comes from, ‘Painting with Light’. By using these multidisciplinary means, a mixture of mediums, and both physical/digital tools, this mesmerizing outcome was created. Psychedelic visual arts were a counterpart to liquid light art and swirling color patterns, which is what I wanted my work to convey in this art piece.
